What happens when I overlook my office lease expiry?

Most companies will sign an office lease for a period of 3 years, with an option to renew (2 or 3 years).

The common practice is for Tenants to inform the landlord of their decision to stay or leave no later than 3-6 months before the end of their lease (depending on what was communicated). After this stipulated deadline, if the Tenant is still not ready to sign on a renewal, the building management will go ahead and list the office as available for rent.

What does this mean?

Your office is no longer reserved for you. Anyone can now sign a lease for your office starting from your lease expiry date.

You will get random visitors viewing your office

Under pressure, you might end up signing for the renewal even if you are not fully certain that is the right business decision.

Tenants get caught in the above scenario usually because of these reasons:

See the lease expiry notices too late

Did not give sufficient lead time time to search for alternatives

Did not notice the deadline written in Tenancy agreement and building management did not give any heads-up

Hence, to avoid getting into such a stressful situation, it is best to note your office’s lease expiry date and give your company sufficient time to prepare for a decision. We recommend our clients to look into alternatives 5 – 8 months before lease expiry.

Note: For serviced offices/ co-working spaces, the contract is auto-renewed if you do not inform them that you want to terminate the lease in time.

Afraid you might forget your lease expiry? We offer a free alert service to all office tenants. Subscribe to our email alerts today!

Office Spaces Singapore was established since 2013 to help companies with their office search. We act as an independent tenants’ advisor in the Singapore office leasing market to help companies find the right office space.

Our mission is to make it easy for all companies to find the perfect work space to suit their business needs at every stage of growth.